Letters to the editor on Archbishop Cordileone, Feb.9

Your editorial on Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s pathetic attempt at forcing medieval theology on 21st century Catholic teachers (“Wrong city, wrong century,” Feb. 5) is very timely. However, your attempt to exonerate the current boss man in the Vatican (forward-thinking Pope Francis) is way off the mark. There is no way on God’s green earth that the pope does not condone Cordileone’s edicts. The pope has absolute control over his underlings, what they say and where they are assigned.

If Francis had any qualms about what the reincarnation of Gregory IX was doing in this diocese, Cordileone would be history. The pope’s retention of Cordileone is absolute proof that the Catholic Church is still mired in the 13th century and has zero intention of ever modernizing. How anyone continues to support the Catholic Church is beyond my comprehension. And I guess I’m going straight to hell too.

Edward Lortz, San Francisco

Excommunicate me

If Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s teachings and his behavior are a true reflection of the Roman Catholic interpretation of Christ’s teachings, then I request that Archbishop Cordileone excommunicate me, preferably at an event no less public than that which the archbishop so proudly attended in Washington, D.C.

Richard Schoofs, Moraga

Natural law

The Catholic Church’s reliance on a fictitious set of principles derived from something they euphemistically call “natural law” is perhaps the cruelest ploy in their arsenal of religious mumbo jumbo that they have used for centuries to control the laity and to justify their irrational teachings regarding human sexuality and reproduction.

Simply put, there is no such thing as natural law. There is, however, something called science that the rest of us rely on to make informed life decisions. Science has long understood that the basic difference that sets human beings apart from other inhabitants of our planet is our ability to adapt our environment to meet our needs. All other species are forced to adapt to their changing environments or die.

By clinging to their Holy Grail of natural law, the Catholic Church condemns its true believers to the fate of all other nonhuman species, whose survival depends upon the whims of Mother Nature.

Frank Losik, Salinas

Lost its way

Pope Francis says the Catholic Church should not be obsessed with dogmatic and moral teachings of the church. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s “morality clause” in the contracts of high school teachers working for Catholic schools in his archdiocese is in conflict with what his boss, the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. I used to admire Catholic schools for accepting and educating children regardless of race or the religion of their parents. In a world where people are burned alive in the name of God, there have to be more important things for the archbishop to focus on.

Lisa Ibanez, Castro Valley

It’s about all of us

Archbishop Cordileone isn’t just “caring for the souls” of Catholics when he condemns masturbation, birth control, abortion and homosexual acts. Under Catholic doctrine these acts are “evil” even when performed by non-Catholics because they violate so-called “natural law,” binding on all humans. If the church had the power and the votes, birth control, abortions and homosexual acts would be illegal for all of us. We forget they were, in most states, right up through the 1960s, because of the church’s power at that time. So there’s much more at stake here than rules for Catholics only.